Asphyxiating chaos
by chasingwords
Summary: 3x06 AU. Beckett knows she's too late from the moment she gets through the door of the motel room, Esposito at her back. The darkness of the room swallows them whole. No stars shine in the black sky behind them. No light to make the hope to find Castle and Ryan alive brighter.
1. Chapter 1

**Thanks to my beta for her help**.

This is only my second time publishing a story in English. It's not my first language. Hope you enjoy it anyway.

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><p>Beckett knows she's too late from the moment she gets through the door of the motel room, Esposito at her back.<p>

The darkness of the room swallows them whole. No stars shine in the black sky behind them. No light to make the hope to find Castle and Ryan alive brighter. The hope to find the Triple Killer and put him behind bars, the only place that would make his future victims safe.

Beckett stops at the entrance of the room, slightly out of breath after running out of her police car and up the stairs to the room. It only takes her a few seconds to see them. The outlines of two persons standing out in the darkness. Two shadows, two holes in the room empty of others.

One is on the floor. From this distance, Beckett doesn't notice anything else. The other one is closer, he's tied up on a chair with arms behind his back, his head falling on his chest at an unusual angle. It didn't take her long to guess.

Ryan and Castle.

Neither were moving. Neither seemed to react when they entered the room.

Her heart stops.

Her breath too. It gets stuck in her throat and she's drowning, drowning in the lack of air and the weight of the silence in the darkness that gets heavier with every passing second. The room becomes small, too small it suffocates her and she can't stay immobile waiting while Castle is silent and not talking. She needs his words. She needs him to talk. Maybe she needs him too.

Beckett feels more than she sees, the other cops passing her to run through to the room, to make sure their suspect isn't here anymore. She doesn't wait for confirmation before running to Castle, taking a quick look to Ryan to make sure Esposito would take care of him.

"Castle? Castle!" she kneels in front of him, yelling his name for a reaction, a proof that he's alive and that she hasn't lost him because Tyson was smarter than they were. Castle stays still to the sound of her broken yells, caged in his pain caused by Tyson.

Beckett puts her flashlight beside her to free her hand and rests it on his cheek, lifting his head slowly. Her shaky fingers move across his cheeks to examine his face in the gloomy room, seeing what her eyes could barely see, feeling his still warm skin throbbing under her touch. Shadows of his eyes face her, the darker edges of his closed eyelids is the only thing visible. She holds her breath and places her other hand on his throat, checking for a pulse, before moving it quickly in front of his mouth. Her skin catches a faint hint of breath and she exhales. He's alive. Whatever Tyson did to him, he didn't kill him. Her hand falls to his shoulder to resume her examination, to find the wound that keeps him unconscious and that's when she feels it under her touch.

Warm and slippery blood flowing continuously against her hand, between her fingers, in a rush to escape his immobile body.

His blood. _No no no no_. Her heart misses a beat, shrieking with her mouth at once incoherent words of despair and promises to save him despite her inability to protect him. She presses her hand against his wound, or what she could see of it in the half-light, in an attempt to stop the flow. Beckett reaches for her flashlight, screaming something to Esposito about telling the ambulance to hurry up, her fuzzy mind unable to make up the exact words she used nor Esposito's answer. She quickly adjusts the flashlight toward her hand stained of his blood, moving it a bit to see the wound and then she realizes –

He's been shot by Tyson.

That son of a bitch.

Anger bubbles in her, tangles in her panic and her urgency to save him (please, let her save him, please please please, she's pretty sure she couldn't do it without him, she couldn't lose him _too_).

"Ka…Kate…"

She startles at the sound of his voice, barely audible, almost a whisper he exhales in the dark. Her thumb resting on his cheek draws smooth and reassuring circles on this skin, her hand shakes slightly of relief of hearing his low but broken voice dancing to her ears.

Because he still has a chance to survive now.

But the moment is gone in a blink, a brief flash of light in the darkness. Castle opens his mouth with determination as if he needs to say something to her, but his pain swallows him whole and he's unconscious again.

And that's when Beckett starts panicking. Air becomes heavy, weighs like bricks on her shoulders. _No no no no, he couldn't give up, not now_. She leans toward him to feel his breathing: it's quick and weak but it's still there.

"Hold on Castle, please hold on, stay with me. The ambulance is almost here, it's on the way. Stay with me, you're gonna be okay. Castle you hear me? You're gonna be okay."

Her voice breaks in the last words even though she tries to control it. Her colleagues are here, in the room, but she doesn't care about what they might think of her or hear. She only cares about him, about Castle making it out alive. Her words bounce on the walls like gunshots in the air, yells of anger and despair. The louder she talks, the more he survives and the more she can convince herself she hasn't failed him because he got shot and she couldn't do a thing about it.

But begging him to survive isn't enough.

She needs action. She couldn't stay here and just talk with him, hoping someone else would be able to save him. She needs to scream her frustration to someone because she couldn't, for now, make Tyson pay. She presses Castle's wound again and half turns her head toward Esposito.

"Esposito! Where's the damn ambulance? We need an ambulance NOW."

Esposito barely has time to open his mouth to answer an ambulance siren screams, filling the silence.


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you so, so much for reading. I hoped you would like it, but i didn't expect as many favorite/follows/reviews. That was a good surprise. I hope you'll like part 2 as well.

Thanks to my beta reader =D

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><p>Beckett shivers, passing a hand through her hair again in an attempt to get it off her face. Her eyes are closed to avoid the coolness of the sheer white hospital walls, deaths and suffering painted all over them. They make the worst scenarios pop up in her head about Castle's fate, conjuring up scenes of doctors coming to them with bad news on their lips, Martha collapsing in shock and Alexis in tears, throwing accusatory eyes at her.<p>

She'd be right. If something happens to Castle today, it would be completely her fault.

Her head falls in her hands and she closes her eyes hard, putting all her strength into it and wiping out those scenes from her brain. She feels someone coming near and smells warm coffee before she sees _him_. Her heart misses a beat; she startles her eyes open and looks for him despite her brain screaming Castle couldn't be in the waiting room with her since he's still in surgery.

"Yo Beckett, any news of your boy?" Esposito stands in front of her. Not Castle, as she should have expected, but her heart still breaks wide open. Esposito gives her the coffee hospital mug and she immediately brings it to her mouth, eager for its warmth to spread throughout her body.

"No, Nothing." Her disappointed eyes stay in the mug instead of staring into Esposito's. She sighs, her slow exhale tremble into the heavy air of the hospital. "Did you find him?" She asks again, finally looking back at Espo. She clenches her fists, voice suddenly low with anger and hurt. She would have spent the rest of the day trying to find and chase Tyson, and finally have the satisfaction to put him behind bars, if it wasn't for Castle being hurt.

"No," he answers honestly, his brown eyes looking in hers, worried but also shining with the desire to make Tyson pay. "We're still canvassing the area around the motel. We've got video footage, Beckett. Kev's going through it now."

Beckett barely nods, unconvinced they were going to find anything at all. Tyson proved he was smarter than making those kind of mistakes and always many steps before them…until now, she promises herself.

But the man had shot Castle and ran away. Her partner could be dying right now and all she could do was sit on this uncomfortable chair staring at white hospital walls that were keeping her prisoner of her thoughts. Powerless when she was responsible for putting her partner on the surgery table. Beckett presses her hand hard against her forehead, as if this gesture could erase the guilt and vision of his blood on her fingers and his unconscious body tied up on a chair, his face too white against the gloomy room, life slowly flowing out of him. When she looks up to Esposito again, he had sat down at her side, but his eyes were still on her.

"We're gonna find Tyson, Beckett. We're all looking for him. He couldn't have gone far. And soon enough Castle will be back throwing alien or CIA theories at us and I swear you're gonna wish again you could get rid of him." Beckett forces a tight smile on her lips, but it disappears after seconds only. Too much, too soon.

"Has anyone seen him since he ran from the motel? Any witnesses?" She asks. She needs to help, to actually _do_ something more useful than play with her hands and think of the worst scenarios of Castle dying and her being the oneto break the news to his mother and daughter. She couldn't be the cop breaking the news of a dead parent to a daughter, and she couldn't put Alexis through everything she had been through after her mother had died.

"No, no one." He sighs and it suddenly hits her that Castle is his friend, _too_ but he's the one comforting her in his own way. "We'll find _something_ Beckett; we'll get a new lead. This guy couldn't have disappeared into thin air."

Beckett stares at the doctors and the nurses walking in the hall in the opposite way to take care of patients. She bites her lips in doubt, torn between getting back to the precinct, throwing herself in this case and catching Tyson to get her revenge for Castle, and being at her partner's side when he wakes up to comfort both him and herself, to be assured that everything would be okay. Throwing herself into action and solving cases was how she usually coped with things.

This time is different. This time, Castle was hurt because he follows her around and pretends to be a cop, too. Somehow, she couldn't leave now. Beckett needs to see her partner breathing and alive, a smile on his face and joke on his lips just to make her laugh (or get one of her eyerolls) after everything they had been through.

She insisted on being the one to call Martha and Alexis as soon as she got to the hospital. She stayed with them— she couldn't just get back to the precinct and leave them alone with their worries and the threat of death or serious injuries hanging over their son and father.

No one should be alone to get through this nightmare.

When Beckett turns again to look at Esposito, he was still staring at her, waiting for an answer to his silent question, giving her time to let his words sink in. "Okay," Beckett begins, pausing again to think a few more seconds. She's longing for his presence beside her again, for visions of him that doesn't include blood, so much it still makes her stomach churns. "I'll wait for Castle. I…I called Martha and Alexis too, so I think I'm just gonna…stay here. And wait. Call me if you and Ryan get something okay?"

Esposito nods and she doesn't need any more words from him. She knows he understands. Beckett exhales anxiously, the wait for answers never-ending. It's a constant fight against herself and it forces her to admit just how much Castle had come to mean to her, much more than she ever allowed herself to. Her partner. Her friend. And…no she couldn't think about the next step. Not now.

"We need to find Tyson, Espo." Her voice resonates on the walls of the hallway, strong and filled with determination burning like fire.

Esposito gets up; his brown eyes mirrors everything that had burst in her voice. "I know, Beckett." He leaves and his steps echo on the hospital's shiny floor. Every step he moves away of Beckett; every step makes her lonelier.

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><p>When the doctor finally comes to them to give news of Castle, Beckett doesn't stand up. She's been putting her detective Beckett mask on and playing the strong one for Alexis and Martha. They sit on hospital chairs, drowning in their anxious silence, and Beckett comforts them quietly, despite the storm swirling inside her.<p>

Now, the doctor standing beside them is enough to crack Beckett's façade. Her legs are shaking and no way would they support her if she even tried to stand. She can't collapse here, not when Martha and Alexis rely on her. She'll just sit and control her shaking legs while the doctor talks about the surgery being a success and how the bullet didn't hit any important arteries or organs and how Castle will probably make a full recovery. She understands nothing except three little words that means everything.

Castle is alive.

Alexis lets out a relieved sob beside her and Martha pulls the other redhead for a hug, barely holding the tears that fill her eyes. The older woman smiles at Beckett and stretches her arm a bit to take her hand. Beckett answers with a weak smile.

She's not sure she deserves that much gratitude from her.

Only two people at once can go visit Castle, so Beckett sends Martha and Alexis even though her heart screams with the need to see him.


End file.
